Am I Still in Texas?

Where do I live?

In Texas, right?

Down south where the winters are short and you rarely get below the 30s?

Isn’t that why I love it here?

Or I used to.

But the last two years have been rather freakish.

We typically have one snow/ice day a year when school is out and you stay home from work with a fire in the hearth and jaunts outside to build a snowman; a snowman that used up all of the snow in the yard. He looked like Pig Pen from Peanuts with patches of brown grass stuck in his snow body.

Now, and I mean this very minute, we can build a family of snow people and still have enough powdery stuff left to trudge through.

I don’t know if I like this. I admit that I don’t like having to wear shorts on Christmas Day, as we’ve had to do occasionally, but this is getting ridiculous.

Remember December of 2009? We had a White Christmas. And last February we had two separate winter “events.” One was known as a Mini Snow-pocalypse, which only lasted a couple days. Not too bad. The other was the Texas snowstorm from hell that knocked out our electricity for 40 hours. We had to keep our milk and eggs in the foot of snow on our deck.

I thought that was just a freak winter for us Texans, but oh no. I had to be proven wrong. We’ve had about an inch of ice on the roads since Monday night, temps in the teens and single digits all week, and then I woke this morning to 6” of snow. School has been closed for an unprecedented four days straight, and I’ve been working from home just as long. I do love being home with my family, but my toes are cold.

I think Mother Nature’s trying to tell me geography no longer matters. I’m trying to make a deal with her, though. If I now have to live with these wickedly cold February months, she should drop the temps down at least a little bit in August.

It’s only fair.

Texas-Sized Mini Snow-pocalypse

I woke this morning to Pat muttering something about an inch of snow outside.

"Whatever," I grumbled and turned over.

"No, really. There's an inch of snow outside."

I finally managed to grunt my way out of bed and looked out. Sure enough, there was a thin blanket of snow covering our backyard. Savannah and I spent the next 20 minutes wishing for a day off. She sat on the coffee table watching the school closures scroll across the screen and I dialed my voicemail at work every few minutes waiting for the inevitable message that the office was closed for the day.

Every few minutes Savannah would yell out, "Awww, man!" and flip to the next channel. Soon afterward I would echo with "Aw, come on!" I mean, this is Dallas. Everything shuts down for an inch of snow, except for the pool halls and grocery stores.

To our dismay, Savannah and I both had a full day at school and work. But when I returned home I took the kids and Biscuit (the dog) outside for a little winter wonderland play time.

Sarah did a little better this time around. She lasted about 15 minutes in the snow before she started crying wanting to go in, as opposed to Christmas when she lasted only 5 minutes. She's not a cold weather baby.



The good sister: Savannah helped Sarah out on to the snow.



"Hey. This isn't so bad."


"Wait. What's this?"


"Help?"


Our cat Gilligan got stuck outside with us. Like Sarah, she couldn't wait to go in.


"Mommy, that was awful!"


"Seriously, don't make me do that again."


Inside safe and warm....


while the two snow freaks stayed outside for at least another hour.


I finally lured them in with biscuit-topped chicken pot pie and Grandma's chocolate cake.

As I write this Pete, our weather guy, says we've had 6-8" of snow. A record for Dallas.

And it's still snowing!

Maybe we'll get our snow day tomorrow.